Hi Junio,

On Wed, 1 Nov 2017, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schinde...@gmx.de> writes:
> 
> >> > +Two special values are supported: `off` will simply close the
> >> > +corresponding standard handle, and if `GIT_REDIRECT_STDERR` is
> >> > +`2>&1`, standard error will be redirected to the same handle as
> >> > +standard output.
> >> 
> >> Consistent with the Unixy special-case for '2>&1', I wonder if the
> >> 'off' case would be more intuitively stated as '>/dev/null' or just
> >> '/dev/null'...
> >
> > I feel this is the wrong way round. `>/dev/null` may sound very intuitive
> > to you, but this feature is Windows only. Guess three times how intuitive
> > it sounds to Windows developers to write `>/dev/null` if you want to
> > suppress output...
> 
> It would be just as intuitive to write '2>&1' for dup-redirection,

No. You misunderstand. I was mainly concerned with the `/dev/null`. Every
Windows developer knows what `>file.txt` means, and many know what
`2>error.txt` means. But `/dev/null` is not Windows, period. It is so not
Windows that Git itself translates it to `NUL` (which you Linux die-hards
won't have a clue about, I would wager a bet).

> Perhaps "dup-to-stdout" or even just "stdout".

No. The value is a path. I can special-case values that are not even valid
Windows file names (such as `2>&1`). I cannot special-case values that are
perfectly valid paths.

> By the way, the description talks about "special values", but it
> leaves it completely unclear what their normal values mean.

True. Fixed. I also threw in an example for a pipe.

Ciao,
Dscho

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